Guest Post

By Eileen Cruz Coleman

I think I always knew I wanted to be a writer. But I didn’t start seriously writing until I was in my early twenties. I was desperately trying to heal from a past experience. For me, writing helped me heal. I sat down one day and wrote my little heart out. It was an honest piece of writing; I dug deep and put it all on paper. I read it to my then boyfriend, now husband. His response was, “You should try and get this published.” And so I did. I published my first piece of writing when I was twenty-five years old. I was hooked after that!

Soon after publishing my first piece of writing, I wrote the novel that later became Sweetwater American, the story of an orphan who is sent to live in a cursed town in El Salvador with her godmother, a woman whom she has never met and who may hold the secret to breaking the town’s curse: no babies have been born alive in five years.

I then wrote my second novel, Rumpel. I first heard the story of Rumpelstiltskin when I was seven years old. I remember sitting in “circle time” while my teacher read the story. When she got to the end, I felt that there had to be more to the story.

I honestly thought she had read us a shortened version and that the longer version was out there somewhere! From that day on, the story of Rumpelstiltskin fascinated me. I wanted to know why he wanted a baby. What was he going to do with it once he got it? Who were the people in his life? What was his world like? What was his childhood like? All of these questions led me to write Rumpel which is a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin. In keeping with the original Brothers Grimm Rumpelstiltskin, Rumpel is dark and at times disturbing, yet it also has a light and quirky element to it in that it is told from the point of view of many different characters all of which play an integral part of the story and how it unfolds. We also get to know Rumpelst

iltskin as a child, then as a young man, and finally as a broken hearted adult.

Reading is such a personal thing. All I can ask of readers is to take a chance on my books. After that, I step aside and mind my own business.

(This is a sponsored post.)